May 13, 2011

The diagnosis has been around since the 1970s when, team physicians and trainers have tried explaining to players that the inexplicable, oft-unbearable pain tearing through their feet was an inflammatory process of the plantar fascia.

Or, in simpler terms: All homo Sapiens have a thick fibrous band of tissue that begins on the heel bone and extends along the sole of the foot toward the toes. When this band, aka the plantar fascia, becomes inflamed, it hurts. “Sort of the same as someone picking up my foot, grabbing a thick piece of wood and slamming it repeatedly into my sole,” says Morgan Valley, a former guard for the UConn women’s basketball team whose battles with plantar caused her to miss 23 games of the Huskies’ undefeated 2001-02 season. “It’s a uniquely terrible injury.” …